Return from Darkness
by Uluithiel
Summary: Gandalf and Aragorn fight for the Ringbearers' lives after they are rescued from Orodruin


Title: Return from Darkness Author: Uluithiel email: uluithiel@hotmail.com Characters: Gandalf, Aragorn, Frodo, Sam Rating: G Date completed: 18 June 2002 Summary: Mordor has fallen, and Gandalf tries to rescue the Ringbearers Story Notes: Tolkien spared us this terrible scene. My heart warns me that PJ may not.  
  
Return from Darkness  
  
between the Towers of the Teeth March 25, 1419 (in the Shire reckoning)  
  
"'Stand, Men of the West! Stand and wait! This is the hour of doom.' . . . the Black Gate was hurled in ruin; and from far away now dim, now growing, now mounting to the clouds, there came a drumming rumble, a roar, a long echoing roll of ruinous noise. 'The Realm of Sauron is ended!' said Gandalf. 'The Ringbearer has fulfilled his Quest.'"  
  
The Return of the King, p 227  
  
  
  
All about him the battle continued to swirl, but Gandalf had no eyes for it. With a piercing whistle he summoned Gwaihir the Windlord and Landroval and Meneldor young and swift. "You will not find me a much greater burden than when you bore me from Zirak-zigil where my old life burned away," he said to the great eagle. "There you rescued my body. Today I ask you to rescue my heart."  
  
The great eagles, with Gandalf on Gwaihir's back, hurtled toward Orodruin. The lands heaved and gasped beneath them. Gandalf knew there was no chance that Frodo and Sam were alive in that ruination of the world, in that cataclysmic termination of the Third Age of Middle Earth. But he continued to scan the smoking, writhing ground, hoping beyond any possibility of hope. As the reeks swirled up his vision was almost obscured, but just before the earth below was totally hidden he saw, standing hand in hand, two tiny forlorn figures. As he swept down upon them, they were stricken down, hiding their eyes from death.  
  
*****  
  
Gandalf had loved Bilbo for many years, and when Bilbo adopted his young cousin Gandalf was willing to love him for Bilbo's sake. However, he soon learned to love Frodo for himself. The tweenager he first knew was a thoughtful lad, with a melancholy air underlying his mischief. Gandalf soon discerned that Frodo had always been lonely. He had been Drogo and Primula's only child, a rarity in hobbit families. When they drowned, Frodo was taken in by the Brandybuck clan. The gesture was kindly, but Gandalf feared it had only increased the child's isolation and loneliness. He was a Baggins, by nature a more inquisitive and thoughtful sort than the rowdy Brandybucks, and in that Hall, filled with merriment and song, Frodo had learned to keep his griefs and worries hidden deep within himself.  
  
Even when Frodo came to live with Bilbo at Bag End he remained an outsider, raised by the outlandish Brandybucks and given to the strange ways of his cousin Bilbo. Only when Frodo's young cousins Meriadoc and Peregrine began to grow up had he had friends. Except Sam, of course. Though Sam was twelve years younger than Frodo, they had been inseparable from their first meeting. The youngest Gamgee child had idolized the older Baggins lad, following him everywhere, making him gifts of taters and flowers. And the young Frodo had not only endured this, he had encouraged it. He seemed to see a Sam that others didn't appreciate under the young gardener's rough hands and stumbling speech.  
  
As Frodo matured, Gandalf had found in him a wealth of emotion he had never before perceived in a Mortal. Frodo's heart was that of a Mortal, sensitive to the near-frantic attachments peculiar to these peoples. But his heart had also the depth and breadth of an Immortal's. Gandalf knew hobbits to be a loving people, but Frodo's capacity for love had an Elven quality of detachment and universality that most Mortal peoples did not share. Aragorn loved Arwen, loved Gondor, loved honor. Merry and Pippin loved friendship, loved adventure. Sam loved Frodo. But Frodo just loved. He just *Loved*. The love in his heart, passionate as that of all mortals, all-encompassing as that of the Eldar, was the hope of Middle Earth. This hobbit's heart had the capacity for enough love to match the hatred and evil that was the Ring.  
  
But Gandalf also perceived that Frodo, unlike other Mortals, was vulnerable to the Elven well of grief: the grief of the Noldor for the peace and exaltation of the Undying Lands; the grief of the Eldar for the light of the Trees that was fading; the grief of the Sindar who must ultimately choose between the forests and the Sea; grief that could kill an Elf as surely as a sword. Gandalf did not understand how this hobbit had come to carry within him the heart of both Mortal and Immortal, but he feared for him. What had become of such a loving heart as it came nearer and nearer the great Darkness, bearing pressed against it the source of all the Evil in Middle Earth?  
  
***** Gwaihir swept low, and Gandalf felt his heart stop as he saw the two broken hobbits. Sam was thin, terribly thin, his lips cracked with long- unrelieved thirst, his head bleeding from a ragged wound, his face grey and sunken with fatigue and weeks of unremitting horror. But Frodo! Gandalf remembered his shock and pain at seeing Frodo in Rivendell after the wounding with the Morgul-blade. That was as nothing to what he saw before him now.  
  
Frodo's face was skeletal, his eyes sunk deep in bruised circles of flesh. His starveling arms and legs sprawled like willow-wands. Gandalf would never have believed a hobbit could be so thin. And - ah, Eru! - his right hand was caked with blood and filth, but Gandalf could see the mangled flesh, the maiming of the small, delicate hand. But worst of all was his face, etched deep with lines of torment the likes of which no Mortal should have to bear.  
  
Gandalf himself could bear no more. Steeling himself to act rather than feel, he swept up the two wasted figures and, cradling them to his breast, bid Gwaihir return to the Pelannor Fields.  
  
***** Aragorn was weary beyond the strength of any man. This battle seemed to have gone on forever. Indeed, for him the battle had been going on for sixty-eight years, and the past weeks had cost him dearly. The long run across Rohan in search of the hobbits Merry and Pippin had taxed his reserves of strength. The Battle of Helm's Deep was a turning point in his leadership, and had depleted him further. Then came the Paths of the Dead, the dark tryst at the Stone of Erech, the wild ride to Pelargir with the Shadow Host's eerie pursuit. Then had come the battle at Pelannor Fields, after which Aragorn, battle-weary as he was, journeyed into the Darkness to retrieve Eowyn, and Faramir, and Meriadoc. The terrible march across the Morannon and the hideous interview with the foul Mouth of Sauron were etched in his heart with terror and blood. When he saw the mithril coat in the hand of Sauron's emissary, almost Aragorn had quailed. Only Gandalf's indomitable courage had sustained him, to muster the Captains of the West in battle against a horde that outnumbered them ten to one.  
  
But most exhausting of all was the victory. After a lifetime of uncertainty, of hope deferred and thwarted, *Aragorn had prevailed*. He had kept his oath to Boromir. The White City would not fall. He could not take it in. As the power of Mordor scattered like dust in the wind, Aragorn leaned on his sword and gazed dully about him.  
  
A messenger in the livery of Gondor appeared before him. "My lord Aragorn, Mithrandir bids you come!" Aragorn squinted at him, hardly comprehending the words but feeling the urgency. The man's face was twisted with anxiety. "My lord, Mithrandir charged me to tell you that the King is needed most urgently!"  
  
It was a summons Aragorn could never refuse. Like an automaton he followed the man to a tent placed upon the hilltop.  
  
When he walked into the tent, at first his mind refused to register what he was seeing. Gandalf, his invincible guide and mentor, was weeping uncontrollably, shoulders hunched in spasms of grief. Aragorn's lethargy snapped as he hurried across the tent to the wizard's side. Then he saw what had been hidden behind the wizard's robes.  
  
His shock was so great that he staggered, and he crept to the rough pallet on his knees. Only later would he realize how fitting that was, that he should approach these two greatest of beings on his knees. At the time he knew only that his legs would not sustain him.  
  
Frodo and Samwise lay insensible, so wounded and ravaged as to be almost unrecognizable. But Aragorn would recognize these two in any condition.  
  
He did not stop to inventory their hurts. Their greatest danger lay in the darkness that had enveloped them for so long and now threatened to claim them utterly. Summoning all the healing power of the Line of Tar-Minyatur, Aragorn gathered the two tiny figures into his arms. Sitting on the earthen floor, he held them to his breast and rocked them tenderly. Gandalf placed his hands on Aragorn's shoulders, but Aragorn was already too far away to be aware of him.  
  
Deep into Darkness the King Elessar plunged, seeking his most beloved of subjects. As he traveled in the vapours of ashen memory he saw much. He saw a wheel of fire, and a flaming Eye, and a silent Watcher with three faces. He saw a monstrous spider, and a tiny person whose hand blazed with light. He saw a swathed figure lying under a cliff, and a small and frightened hobbit entering Mordor alone. And Orcs, Orcs everywhere. He saw Orcs taking up the unconscious Frodo, stripping him, and amusing themselves with his pitifully shrunken flesh. He saw Samwise singing forlornly and weeping with joy. He felt desperate hunger and parching thirst, and weariness greater than Mortal flesh can bear.  
  
He heard the siren song of the Ring, the song he had heard on Amon Hen when Frodo held out to him Isildur's Bane. The wheel of fire came closer and closer until it engulfed all, and then he saw Frodo, standing alone at Sammath Naur, claiming the Ring for his own. Aragorn cried out in anguish as the Ringbearer placed the Ring on his finger. Then he saw a slinking shadow spring, and heard Frodo's scream echo his own, and saw the hobbit fall, bleeding, on the edge of the very Crack of Doom.  
  
"Lasto beth nin. Tolo dan na ngalad!" the King Elessar cried in a voice that rang through the Darkness.  
  
***** "Aragorn. You must return." The voice was faint but clear, and its intonation was familiar. Aragorn had known it somewhere, years and millenia ago, before he went into the Darkness where he had dwelt for seven Ages of the world. Wearily he summoned the strength to reply.  
  
"I am here, Gandalf." Aragorn stirred, slowly recollecting who and where he was. Then, like a bolt of lightning he remembered: "Frodo! Sam!"  
  
"They have returned. Tolo dan na ngalad, King Elessar. You have done your work well. The Stewards of the Houses of Healing can now tend to the hurts of their bodies. You have recovered their souls. I am grateful for . . . ." the wizard's voice broke.  
  
Aragorn raised his head slowly. "You found them, Gandalf. You brought them from Orodruin."  
  
"And you, my King, have brought them from the Darkness. You have returned to me, Aragorn, those who are dearer to my heart than I can . . ." Again the voice broke, then the wizard continued in a whisper, "I could not have borne . . ."  
  
Aragorn put out a hand, amazed that it was steady, and grasped that of Gandalf, amazed that it was trembling. And the wizard and the King wept together in anguish and in joy.  
  
  
  
the end 


End file.
